


Games Played by the Gods

by Wei (wei_jiangling)



Category: Chinese History RPF, Chinese Mythology, Sān guó yǎn yì | Romance of the Three Kingdoms - All Media Types, Three Kingdoms History & Adaptations - All Media Types
Genre: Chess, Gen, afterlife setting, highly intellectual crackfic, i guess they're friends now, more or less, novel deconstruction, or historical variations thereof, picking on history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 10:57:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21355147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wei_jiangling/pseuds/Wei
Summary: Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang play a friendly strategy game in bureaucratic heaven.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 14
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2019





	Games Played by the Gods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reishiin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reishiin/gifts).

The clink of an ivory piece against a wooden board signaled that it was time for Zhou Yu to consider his next move. Across the table from him sat Zhuge Liang, watching intently to see what that play would be. 

He picked up his general, moved it, and had barely set it down when an attention-getting sort of cough emanated from the doorway. The two strategists looked up to find an apologetic-looking attendant standing barely inside the room with them. 

"Zhong Wu Hou," the attendant announced, and Zhuge Liang sighed, knowing that title meant official business, "Your presence is requested at your temple in Hanzhong." With a nod, he stood, looking ruefully at the half-finished game. 

"We'll have to continue this after I return," he offered with a note of apology in his voice. 

"Of course," Zhou Yu conceded, "After all, business is business." 

He watched the two others leave, relaxing comfortably in his chair. He was used to waiting like this, by now. This was far from the first time one of their games had been interrupted. The first temple deifying Zhuge Liang had been constructed only two years after his death, and since then, he had regularly been called upon to assist those offering prayers with whatever matters they brought forth. He was worshiped and glorified, attributed legends far surpassing the truth, held up as a paragon of what it meant to be a strategist. Someone to whom no one else could compare, if one believed the legends. 

Zhou Yu, on the other hand, did not have a temple to this day. The people who saw fit to expound upon his legacy seemed to think he might be bothered by that disparity, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. Many who prayed asked for ideas and wisdom; Zhuge Liang was known for his brilliant mind, so that was natural. But every once in a while, he would come back with a story of someone who had prayed to Zhuge Liang of all people for something as inane as dealing with a spurned lover or retrieving a farm animal that had wandered from their field. And of course, most asked simply for help in their studies. The work of granting blessings to wayward worshipers asking for things which may or may not even technically fall under one's purview seemed drudging at best, and Zhou Yu was content enough to not be bothered with it. It may have, in a way, even been an advantage; Zhou Yu had won their last seven games thanks to Zhuge Liang being so regularly distracted with these often monotonous tasks, a streak of which he was quite proud.

The living people who told stories had not been wrong about the rivalry between them, at least. But the animosity had been more a product of circumstances than anything else. How would there not be enmity between the strategists of warring nations? By the same token, why should such divisiveness continue when they were no longer attached to their respective sides? It had taken some time--after all, such loyalties die hard--but eventually they had found in each other a companionable rival for games of strategy (a role that Sun Ce, for all Zhou Yu loved him, had never figured out how to adequately fill.) 

Zhou Yu was uncertain exactly how much time had passed with him idly staring at the board in front of him when Zhuge Liang returned. Time was something of a more nebulous concept here. 

"What was it this time?" he asked, making a polite gesture for his opponent to return to his seat. 

"A festival," he replied, sitting down, and seeming less interested in the conversation than he was in the board. Zhou Yu supposed even such lively events as that might get old, given time. 

"That explains why it took you so long. Anything interesting?"

"There was a stage play telling the story of my life," he said as he took his move. "You were in it." He added the latter as if maybe that should be a surprise. As if maybe Zhou Yu's entire existence would quite naturally be getting lost to history by now. Just because _he_ didn't have _temples_...

There were, he would have to admit, times when Zhuge Liang's popularity did grate a bit, when he chose to rub it in like that. Even if Zhou Yu was fully aware that the entire purpose was to get him as distracted from the game as Zhuge Liang was by the interruptions. In the end, however, he had no intention of letting that distraction succeed. 

As such, it was probably a good thing that he had already decided on his move when Zhuge Liang further commented, "They called you 'the beautiful youth.' It would seem that you're now known primarily for being young." 

He frowned as he lifted and placed his pawn. "I'm older than you." 

"Not if you compare how old we were when we died." 

"I suppose that's fair." 

Zhuge Liang examined the board for a moment in silence before moving a pawn of his own. The next few minutes went by without a word. Perhaps that one shift in the narrative was really all Zhuge Liang had had to distract him with. 

Or perhaps he was simply waiting, as the next words out of his mouth, when Zhou Yu was in the midst of a particularly difficult decision between plays, were, "And apparently I taunted you to death." 

His hand, which had been hovering above the board, fell to the table, nearly knocking over a pawn. "Oh, come now!"

**Author's Note:**

> I imagine that this particular scenario is not something you had ever considered when writing that list of requests, but I hope you enjoyed it. I know I did. When I saw that you had asked for Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I knew I had to write some kind of a treat for it. I have a degree in East Asian Studies, with a particular focus in Three Kingdoms history (and how certain of those people turned into regularly worshipped gods), that has seen next to no use in the past decade, and this gave me an incredible excuse to pull it all back out and turn it into probably the most intellectual idiocy I have ever written. So thank you. 
> 
> A couple notes for flavor:  
-They're playing gewu, which is apparently a precursor to modern xiangqi, which is a variant of western chess (it's debatable which came first). I have no idea what the rules of gewu are aside from it seeming to involve pawns and generals, hence the complete vagueness of my descriptions. It just seemed to be the form accurate to their point in history. Semi-relatedly, I found this while researching and I can't find a second source to confirm, but if it's a true story, it's wild: http://www.yutopian.com/chinesechess/stories/wushou.html I'm still not sure what job Zhou Yu has in the heavenly bureaucracy here, but after finding this, I have tossed around the thought that maybe he is the game official of heaven and he decided he likes Zhuge Liang because he's the one person he can play against fully genuinely and not try to engineer winning or losing for effect.  
-Apparently the name "the beautiful youth" was added very late in the game by Japanese storytellers, but considering Zhou Yu is typically described as being pretty, I find it conceivable that it could have shown up somewhere in the oral tradition, and I thought it was funny, even if Zhou Yu didn't.


End file.
